CC – Final Project Proposal

For the final project, I’m making a website called Gun Funded. It’s a social action project that visualizes the gun lobby’s funding of the US Congress, built with Next.js & vx.

I started this project in August after the series of high-profile mass shootings, but only made some initial moves before moving to New York. Since then, my ambition has only grown. I’m taking the opportunity of the final project and the Winter Show to take an early idea/prototype and make it into something good in the world (I hope).

I’ve already compiled the datasets (a multi-day endeavor) and begun on a basic UI, but I want to push my skills forward. I’ve done very little data visualization work, so I’m going to focus especially on creating compelling, accurate data visualizations (perhaps aided by residents like Shirley Wu). I’ve also not succeeded at creating anything with a capability of virality by myself, so I’m orienting this project with the goal of it being spread widely online when I eventually launch it. Though the site will be largely politically neutral (though the concept of the site implies that gun lobby funding is bad, if it’s being exposed in the first place), I’m making it for the audience of the interested US citizen.

I created NRA Funded after the Pulse shooting in Orlando in 2015. The site represented my first attempts at data visualization and production React, and I’ve come a long way technically and design-wise since then. But my motivation remains, and has only strengthened with each massacre since: American young people deserve better than a world where our livelihood is threatened by men with guns, and the gun lobby is protecting this evil system by funding Congresspeople to refuse to pass gun legislation. Congress has American blood on its hands, and I want to help people understand this system.